1. The final chord of “A Day in the Life,” the Beatles, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

2. The opening to The Who’s “Eminence Front.”

3. The video is not recommended by dentists. But this is one of my favorite R & B songs. The little girl dancing is among my favorite moments.

4. The final note of Linda Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou.”

5. Merrie Clayton’s backing vocal, “Gimme Shelter,” the Rolling Stones.

She’s no Merrie Clayton–who is?—but this young woman does just fine on the same song. Wow.

6. An indescribable and delicious little hip twitch that the Supremes do, in unison, ten seconds into the beginning of “Stop! In the Name of Love.”

7. I don’t get this video, which was before “video” was invented, but this might be my favorite rock song of all time–the intro, again, percussion and Steve Winwood on keyboards–grabs me every time.

8. The seemingly endless ending to Chicago Transport’s Authority “Beginnings.”

9. The late Pattie Santos’ vocals for “White Bird,” by It’s a Beautiful Day. The whole song is incredible. Santos died young in an automobile accident. No “moment” here, because I love the whole song.

10. Because I have always loved harmonies–the Beach Boys, for example, the Beatles, CSN and Y–this song, so evocative in the Tarantino film thanks to the Canyon murders that helped to end 1960s’ promise. The first two lines (“I used to live in New York City/Everything there was dark and dirty”) which was true in the 1960s–far, far less so now– hooked me.

Bonus: Proof our music was pretty good, from young folks. (The bassist is adorable.). Thanks, kids.

Mr. Rank Amateur Film Critic was once prepared to dislike Baz Lurhman films.

I mean, what kind of name is “Baz?” Almost as bad as “Elon.”

Then I saw “Moulin Rouge”–I was still teaching European history at AGHS, including a lesson on Paris at this time–and I sat in the theater with a stupid smile on my face until the sad part. I love this scene still and, dayamn, Ewan McGregor is handsome. (For a completely different film, his devoted father and husband in 2012’s “The Impossible,” about a family washed apart by a tsunami, restores your faith in dads.)

I had never seen a version of “The Great Gatsby” that I liked until Lurhmann’s. Leo was captivating, and the film’s palette–bright primary colors, like Jay’s roadster amid the ash-heaps–was amazing. In fact, I’d never been that fond of “Gatsby,” the novel–I preferred its prototype, a longish short story, “Winter Dreams.” The Luhrman film gave me a new appreciation for the novel.

So I went back to an earlier film, “Strictly Ballroom,” and the female lead, Tara Maurice, was not so captivating. She was dowdy. And then she kind of blossoms. The final ballroom contest scene is marvelous.

“Elvis” is not my favorite Luhrman film, with the great exceptions of the scenes that connect Elvis to his Black roots and the scene, just after this one, where he begins to gyrate at the Hayride. But this is the scene–I guess because I took a year of the History of the American South in college– that still mesmerizes me.

And, I realized that it would be cheating not to share that scene. Maybe it’s Tom Hanks’s (Forrest Gump/Captain Miller, the character who falls in love with Meg Ryan in two films) lurking, as the Colonel– like a cross between a venomous cobra and Jabba the Hutt–that bothers me about this film.

My father was an Adlai Stevenson Democrat; my mother was an Eisenhower Republican, and, even in the 1950s, one lively political discussion in the kitchen ended with Mom dumping a colander of fresh Oceano strawberries upside-down on my father’s head.

JFK was the first Democrat my mother voted for, but that was because he was Irish.

So those are my political credentials. I am a Flaming Moderate.

As such, it dismayed me to hear the president* shift arguments about his Triumphal Arch. “Who’s it for?” a reporter asked in an Oval Office press gaggle last week. “Me.” Trump replied.

Later, he amended his reason for The Arch. The military wants it. Its height (250 feet, facing the 98-foot Lincoln Memorial) would make it ideal for launching drones and for storing a vast cache of ammunition intended for the snipers who would find vast fields of fire from atop The Arch.

It makes you wonder: For whom are the drones and the snipers intended? And precisely which flag officer implored that the president* build the Arch for those purposes?

In July 1830–the time of Les Miserables–the French overthrew King Charles X, who rode to his coronation in a gilt coach and entered the cathedral, on a white horse, in a full suit of armor. It went no better than the president’s* Reflecting Pool: hundreds of doves were released above the king and, being excited, they did what doves will do, and all over the King’s burnished armor.

His reign was marked by catastrophic crop failures, which generated inflation in the price of bread, which the king ignored. Charles responded to rising dissent by shuttering the press, dissolving the Chambre, the Chamber of Deputies, and by turning the cannon that defended Paris atop their ramparts inward, toward the city interior.

Parisians rebelled, in what they call the July Days. The cannonball, from July 28, 1830, was never removed from the wall to commemorate the downfall of a tyrant.

Thankfully, the tyrant abdicated–the revolution against his rule is also the subject of the Delacroix painting Liberty Leading the People-– and fled to England disguised as woman. The throne passed to his son, who likewise abdicated after a reign that lasted fifteen minutes.

Sadly, Charles did not yet have his own arch–the Arc de Triomphe would not be finished until six years after he’d fled France–and, even then, it’s sixteen feet shorter than the one the president* proposes for his snipers’ nest.

Mon Dieu.

They don’t know they’ve been discovered by me, but, by golly, they have been.

Dea Matrona (“Divine Mother”) is a Belfast band whose core members, Mollie McGinn and Orláith Forsythe, are onetime schoolmates. They started out as buskers, playing on street corners, and now are a big deal.

Busking: (The drummer left to finish her education). Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well:”

Wait. Weren’t they starting another song at the end there?

Yup. Sure was. How can shoppers just walk past them? Well, that one fellow gets it

Now, they’re concert-ing.

Two more covers:

“Gloria,” from fellow Northern Irishman Van Morrison:

“Crossroads,” another from my day, by Cream:

And one of their own songs:

Another original, very Irish (the thorn trees and the horse are prominent in Irish mythology), but this is a song about hurting a loved one.

Yes, they are attractive and sexy and all that. But, far more important, they rock.